Crate and Barrel Reviews

Pros

The sales people I worked with were great. Everyone worked as a team to meet daily store sales goals.

Cons

Didn't get enough hours to work some weeks.

Pros

Majority of the people who work at a Crate store are really friendly and willing to take the time to help you with questions, etc. The training program is pretty decent; about two weeks of videos and workbook before you get onto the floor to shadow. In order to do in-home customer consults, you need to become a Design Expert and that's about a 6 week certification process. Although, there isn't an increase in pay once you're certified nor can you sit off the floor to read/watch the certification materials. It helps if you have a design background and/or a strong sales person for this job. The work can be challenging in both a good and bad way. You also need to be quick on your feet and turn around a design proposal pretty quick, 2-3 days. You do get a 30% discount and once a year they have an Employee Appreciation event with an extra 20% most items.

Cons

The base rate (hourly rate) is low. Very little room to negotiate. The commission rate(s) isn't much better. Medical insurance is decent but expensive. Expect to make between $40-$50k. You won't be making the big bucks here. They expect a lot from you in terms of "numbers" on top of prospecting to strum up customers (i.e. cold calling, going to apartments, realtors, etc) with very little to zero way to track if your efforts will even come back to you. A lot of effort for very little return. Pushing their store credit card is also another marker that they track and hold you to, opening a certain number of cards per month. You meet with the Dept Mgr every two weeks to review your sales numbers to see where you are, the print out is not very straight forward so the manger has to break it down and write it out. ** YOU'RE IN THE BACK SEAT WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR OWN SALES NUMBERS. ** YOU DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO LOOK AT YOUR DAILY/HOURLY SALES NUMBERS IN AN UP TO THE MINUTE PROGRAM OR REPORT. Although, you can get rough estimate by logging into an archaic program, getting paper/pencil and adding it up. But even then, you're still left guessing. After your year of protected commission, you're hourly rate drops and you will get written up if you don't make your sales goal for the quarter. After 3 write ups, you're fired. Crate also employs Mystery Shoppers to make sure you're following protocol. If you want to apply to a corporate job, you have to have your manager, store mgr and about 2 other people who don't even know you sign off before your green lighted to even be considered. When corporate comes to do a walk-through, they can be smug and don't make much of an effort to speak to store associates. In the end, it's all about the numbers.